I take exception to calling Mr Furlong one of Vancouver’s Awesome as he is on the Board of Directors of Rocky Mountaineer Railtours who on June 22nd locked out over 100 dedicated onboard attendants.

RM has boasted that they are a 200 million dollar company but refuses to give it’s employees a reasonable wage increase after 3 years at the same pay rate. They have never followed the federal labour code when it comes to overtime yet the company hides behind that same labour code by using replacement workers (scabs), which is illegal in the province of British Columbia. The use of scab labour undermines the right to fair bargaining by the employees.

The company feels no pressure to negotiate and claims to be running the business as usual. The over 100 locked out onboard attendants do not see this as business as usual, it is not usual to be standing on the other side of a fence watching someone else do their jobs. It is not usual to have overstaffed coaches to make up for the inexperience of the new workers. It is not usual to have “managers” staffing the coaches and serving the guests. And it certainly is not “business as usual” to have to cross a picket line at the beginning or end of a trip.

The company is doing their best to make the locked out employees look like the bad guys; they will say that they had no choice but to lock their employees out, however the negotiating team had asked for an extension to avoid giving strike notice, and in order for the staff to keep working while negotiating, and it was denied. Instead the company chose lock the staff out and to put into place an expensive contingency plan in an obvious effort to break the union.

They have enlisted an abundance of security to constantly film and intimidate the peaceful picketers, have spent countless dollars trying serve court injunctions against employees that are only trying to get their jobs back. They’ve put tarpaulins along the fences so that the guests cant see the faces of the award winning staff that should be on that train.

These are not greedy people, these are people who love their jobs and have years of experience on the train. These are the real attendants whose faces can be seen in the literature on the train, advertisements and commercials. They are people with families, mortgages and babies on the way. These are people that dedicate their lives to the company and work tremendously long hours to build a nest egg in order to make the money they earn stretch an entire year as they are not easily employable in the winter time.

As a board member and a proud British Colombian, it’s abhorrent that Mr Furlong has allowed this to go on for months.

There is definite irony in reading this interview while knowing about Furlong’s involvement with Rocky Mountaineer. This company now has a well deserved local reputation of being corporate bullies from treating their loyal staff and even their unsatisfied customers with little to no compassion. Take in all the facts of this brutal and heartless Lock Out of over 100 hard working, and award winning attendants then try to match it with Furlong’s quote above,”My mother told me to be humble and to never ever diminish the contribution of another.” It seems that Mr.Furlong needs to re-assess what his Mother was trying to teach him, as he’s quite obviously missed the point.